About

Right to Die

PRO (yes) CON (no) The American Civil Liberties Union stated in its 1996 amicus brief in Vacco v. Quill that: "The right of a competent, terminally ill person to avoid excruciating pain and embrace a timely and dignified death bears the sanction of history and is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. The exercise of this right is as central to personal autonomy and bodily integrity as rights safeguarded by this Court's decisions relating to marriage, family relationships, procreation, contraception, child rearing and the refusal or termination of life-saving medical treatment. In particular, this Court's recent decisions concerning the right to refuse medical treatment and the right to abortion instruct that a mentally competent, terminally ill person has a protected liberty interest in choosing to end intolerable suffering by bringing about his or her own death.

A state's categorical ban on physician assistance to suicide -- as applied to competent, terminally ill patients who wish to avoid unendurable pain and hasten inevitable death -- substantially interferes with this protected liberty interest and cannot be sustained."

1996 - The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Margaret P. Battin, PhD, Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Utah, and Timothy E. Quill, MD, Professor of Medicine, Psychiatry, and Medical Humanities at the University of Rochester, stated the following in their 2004 book Physician-Assisted Dying: The Case for Palliative Care & Patient Choice: "We firmly believe that physician-assisted death should be one--not the only one, but one--of the last-resort options available to a patient facing a hard death. We agree that these options should include high dose pain medication if needed, cessation of life-sustaining therapy, voluntary cessation of eating and drinking, and terminal...

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...law that will not let a doctor kill a patient. Suffering can be very painful to these patients. Who wants to suffer ?
"At the Hemlock Society we get calls daily from desperate people who are looking for someone like Jack Kevorkian to end their lives which have lost all quality..."(Faye Girsh, EdD). Jack Kevorkian understood everything even down to the the stress and pain patients went through. Kevorkian tried everything in his power to allow PAS to become legal through the whole U. S. He went to jail for what he believed in. "If you don't have liberty and self-determination, you've got nothing, that's what this is what this country is built on. And this is the ultimate self-determination, when you determine how and when you're going to die when you're suffering." (Jack Kevorkian). Kevorkian makes excellent points to describe the terminally ill and how they're feeling during their suffering and pain.
Kevorkian did all types of research on the terminally ill from college to visting the terminally ill and study their bodies during that time. The three states that legalize PAS are Oregon, Washington, and Montana. In Oregon patients that request PAS, 62% of them actually completed it. PAS accounts for 156 per 10,000 deaths in Oregon. The reason for these fatal request in Oregon is because 86% reported a decreasing ability to participate in activities that made life enjoyable.
In Washington, the Washington's Act is, regardless, coercive: An heir who will...

...The Right To Die
Imagine that you have come down with a disease and you have just been told that there is no cure. There in your hospital bed all you can think about is the pain and the agony you are going to have to endure for the rest of your remaining life. I for one know that I do not want to spend my last times on this earth in pain and discomfort, knowing that I will never walk again, or feed myself, or maybe ever even come back to consciousness. For years, doctors have been prohibited from helping patients to take their own lives. I believe that a terminally ill patient should have the right to decide if they have had enough. By legalizing euthanasia, also referred to as physician assisted suicide, tremendous pain and suffering of patients can be saved. The right to die should be a fundamental freedom to each person. Patients should have to right to die with their dignity intact rather than have their illness leave them as merely a shell of their former selves. These are just a few of the reasons as to why every individual should have the right to die if they are terminally ill.
Numerous ailments such as certain types of cancer result in a slow, agonizing death. Doctors have enough knowledge and experience to know when a patient's days are numbered. What purpose would it serve to suffer endlessly until the body finally gives out?...

...cannot be considered murder because patients select to die, their deaths end suffering, and there is no intention to cause harm. Murder can be defined as an act of violence which is perpetrated against a victim (Dictionary.com). The individual dies at a time which is forced by the killer who has intent to harm the person. Frequently murder is painful and the person who is dying has not voluntarily decided to participate in the death (Patashnik). By its nature, murder is death by violence at a time of the killer's rather than nature's choosing.
Unlike murder, euthanasia is not an act of violence. In an editorial in the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dr. Eric Chevlen argues that patients who are worn down by pain, extensive testing, and depression, will be easily persuaded to seek assisted suicide (Humphry). Furthermore, Chevlen mentions that the courts have decided that the right to die should be made available to everyone (Gewertz). Modern medical technology has allowed doctors to prolong life past the point of a patient's natural death. In the case of euthanasia, the doctor needs to end suffering from all types of terminal illnesses and assist the patient to die comfortably (Patashnik). Patients are beginning to assert their right to die rather than being kept alive forcibly. For example, Dan Cowart, a Texan who suffered burns in a gas explosion, wanted to die even though he...

...The Right to Die, and Doctor-Assisted Suicide: The Mission of Late Dr. Jack Kevorkian
Imagine a patient in a hospital suffering from the AIDS disease. And since his diagnosis he has suffered from two bouts of pneumonia, chronic, severe sinus and skin infections, severe seizures, and extreme fatigue. Seventy percent of his vision is already lost, and the disease has gone terminal. He has requested that his doctor prescribe him medicine that would kill him thus ending his suffering. This is exactly what Dr. Jack Kevorkian has been fighting for his entire life. To shed positive light upon the controversial subject of Physician-Assisted Suicide.
A little back story on Dr. Jack Kevorkian. Kevorkian was the son of Armenian refugees who came to America to escape the Turkish genocide. His early talents ranged from hand-made woodwork, linguistics, to science experiments conducted in his basement. He then became a pathologist, devoting his life to the unusual task of showing the positives and social benefits from death. “He did not just take on the medical establishment and the law; throughout his life he dared to challenge a taboo as old as human civilization – the taboo against death” (Nicol, Wylie 2) Kevorkian was very outspoken and intensely committed to the causes that he believed in. He also lacked the ability to lie, so much, that its said that whenever he played poker with his friends, that he never bluffed, and if he bet everyone...

...Diana Gonzalez
The Right to Die
Introduction: Imagine to have to depend on another to feed, clothe, bathe, and even get you out of bed on a day to day basis. Or even imagine having a chronic and extremely painful illness, would you want to have the right to ask your doctor to end your suffering? Euthanasia” is a broad term for mercy killing—taking the life of a hopelessly ill or injured individual in order to end his or her suffering.
Specific propose: To inform my audience about the moral implications of assisted suicide. Kevorkian’s theory stated that death was better than life in some cases, and that morality was flexible in such situations.
Central idea: Assisted suicide developed as a way to die with as much dignity as possible. I am going to discuss voluntary medical assisted euthanasia, as utilized by Dr. Kevorkian.
I. Kevorkian theory was first used on June 4, 1990 were the result of deeply held opinions on the right-to-die issue.
A. 54-year-old Janet Adkins suffering from the early stages of Alzheimer’s disease was the first person to have their life ended by his theory in 1990.
II. Strengthened by recent court victories Jack Kevorkian and the right-to-die movement are well on their way to making euthanasia as much a part of American life as abortion has become over the past two decades.
B. Abortion is legal so what's the...

...Physician-Assisted Suicide: The Right to Die with Dignity
One of the most controversial topics in society is physician-assisted suicide. The debate is endless in regards to human suffering. There is a solid argument in favor of physician-assisted suicide in terminally ill patients, who are experiencing unbearable pain and have little time left. Research shows that one who is terminally ill and going through excruciating pain has the right to make decisions regarding free choice and human dignity to end one’s life in a merciful way. Research on opposing arguments will show that physician-assisted suicide has negative psychological effects on the doctor along with being morally wrong to take the precious gift of life. Public attitude, education, perception, religious beliefs, family values, and freedom of choice all combine to make the decision of whether physician-assisted suicide is right or wrong, is murder or not murder, one that will truly never be clearly defined. This writer believes that all human beings have the right to be safe and free of pain when one is suffering from a terminal illness.
To understand physician-assisted suicide one must know what it is meant by the term. According to Worsnop, this form of suicide allows a physician to help a suffering patient with an incurable disease end one’s life. In 1994, residents in the state of Oregon agreed upon the Death and...

...America proclaims its freedoms and rights of the people to any ear that will listen. Our country is founded on democracy and the free electoral system. Even the United Nations holds a document adopted sixty years ago entitled the “Universal Declaration of Human Rights” (UDHR) drafted by participating UN countries. According to this document we as human beings are said to have equal rights. Article 3 of the UDHR states “Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.” (un.org, article 3) But what about the right to die? If humans are entitled to such basic rights as the right to life, then the right to die is a human right as well.
As adults we have choices in life concerning what we do with our body. Aside from select areas in Africa and illegal underground slave trades, we all own ourselves and no one can buy, sell or claim as property another person. We are our own property, to do whatever we want to with so long as it doesn’t harm another. Almost anywhere you go in the world you find people with tattoos and body piercing. Plastic surgery is becoming more and more popular, and we can even donate organs. Any medical procedure performed in the US requires a consent form. Even if it’s medically necessary a person can decline a procedure even if it means they will die. When you are injured...

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The Right to Die
In today’s society, the rapid and dramatic development of medicine and technology has allowed us to save more lives than was ever possible in the past. Medicine enabled us the means to cure or to reduce the suffering of people afflicted with diseases that were once fatal or painful. At the same time, however, medical technology has given us the power to sustain the lives (or, some would say, prolong the deaths) of patients whose physical and mental capabilities cannot be restored, whose degenerating conditions cannot be reversed, and whose pain cannot be eliminated. As medicine struggles to pull more and more people away from the edge of death, the plea that tortured, deteriorated lives be mercifully ended grows louder and more frequent. Euthanasia has become a provocative subject because of its past, present and future status among todays families.
Euthanasia is a controversial topic, not only because there are many moral delemmas associated with it, also in what it constitutes its definition. At the extreme ends of disagreement, some schools of thoughts aid in dying, is a merciful act of dying and at the other end, there are opponent of euthanasia who believe that this method is a form of murder. The term euthanasia is derived from the Greek word ‘eu’ meaning “good” and ‘thanatos’ means death.
"In ancient Greece and Rome, before the coming of Christianity, attitudes toward infanticide, active...